Instances of Phonological Weight-Sensitivity in Early Middle English Poetry

• Authors: Kołos Marta
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The present paper addresses the issue of heavy syllables and their special status in Early Middle English iambic poetry. The expected stress pattern for native vocabulary is essentially trochaic and left-strong, yet numerous non-root-initial heavy syllables appear to receive accent in literary works of the period. In Old English, the language relied on syllabic quantity to a great extent, both for poetic and linguistic accentuation. The question arises whether the apparent potential of heavy syllables for attracting poetic accent in Middle English might be a remnant of Old English weight sensitivity. Another issue to be addressed is the possibly different employment of heavy syllables (in ictic positions) in Early Middle English poems as opposed to later poetic works of the period.

Keywords

EN

heavy syllables; iambic; accentuation; ictic position; poetry; weight-sensivity

• Publisher: Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw
• Journal: Anglica. An International Journal of English Studies
• Year: 2015
• Issue: 24/2
• Pages: 27-40

Contributors

author

Kołos Marta

• University of Warsaw

References

• Atkins, John W. H., and Nicholas de Guildford, eds. 1922. The Owl and the Nightingale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Furnivall, Frederick J., ed. 1879. The Ellesmere MS of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. London: N. Truebner.
• Hall, Joseph, ed. 1920. Selections from Early Middle English 1130–1250. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Holt, Robert, ed. 1878. The Ormulum. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press.
• Kläber, Frederick, ed. 1950. Beowulf. Lexington: D. C. Heath and Company.
• Middle English Dictionary Online. Available at: <http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/m/mec>
• Oxford English Dictionary. Available at:
• Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Online. Available at: <http://www.bosworthtoller.com>
• Bermúdez-Otero, Ricardo. 1996. “Stress and Quantity in Old and Early Middle English: Evidence for an Optimality Theoretic Model of Language Change.” [Available at Rutgers Optimality Archive, 136–0996].
• Bravo, Antonio, Fernando García, and Santiago González. 1991. The Owl and the Nightingale: A Critical Text. Oviedo: Universidad de Oviedo.
• Dresher, B. Elan, and Aditi Lahiri. 1991. “The Germanic Foot: Metrical Coherence in Old English.” Linguistic Inquiry 22: 251–286.
• Fulk, Robert Dennis. 1992. A History of Old English Meter. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
• Fulk, Robert Dennis. 2002. “Early Middle English Evidence for Old English Meter: Resolution in Poema Morale.” Journal of Germanic Linguistics 14: 331–355.
• Hayes, Bruce. 1988. “Metrics and Phonological Theory.” Linguistics: the Cambridge Survey, vol. 2. Ed. Fredrick J. Newmeyer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 220–250.
• Hayes, Bruce. 1989. “The Prosodic Hierarchy of Meter.” Phonetics and Phonology, vol. 1: Rhythm and Meter. Ed. P. Kiparsky, and G. Youmans. San Diego: Academic Press. 201–260.
• Korhonen, Mikko. 1994. “The Early History of the Kalevala Metre.” Songs Beyond the Kalevala. Transformations of Oral Poetry (Studia Fennica Folkloristica 2). Ed. A. Siikala, and S. Vakimo. Helsinki: Suomalaisen kirjallissuden seura. 75–87.
• Kołos, Marta. 2014. “Non-Root-Initial Ictus on Native Words in Old and Middle English Poetry.” Anglica 23/2: 33–41.
• Kuryłowicz, Jerzy. 1976. “The Linguistic Foundations of Meter.” Biuletyn Polskiego Towarzystwa Językoznawczego 34: 63–73.
• Lahiri, Aditi. 2002. “Pertinacity in Representation and Change.” Paper presented at the Workshop of Pertinacity, Schloss Freudental, July 10–14, 2002.
• Lahiri, Aditi, Tomas Riad, and Haike Jakobs. 1999. “Diachronic Prosody.” Word Prosodic Systems in the Languages of Europe. Ed. H. van der Hulst. New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 335–422.
• Laing, Margaret. 1992. “A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English: the Value of Texts Surviving in More than One Version.” History of Englishes (New Methods and Interpretations in Historical Linguistics 10). Ed. M. Rissanen et al. New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 566–581.
• Lass, Roger. 1994. Old English: A Historical Linguistic Companion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Marchand, Hans. 1969. The Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word-Formation. A Synchronic-Diachronic Approach (2nd edition). München: C.H. Beck.
• Minkova, Donka. 1996. “Non-Primary Stress in Early Middle English Accentual-Syllabic Verse.” English Historical Metrics. Ed. C. B. McCully, and J. J. Anderson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 95–120.
• Russom, Geoffrey. 1990. “A New Kind of Metrical Evidence in Old English Poetry.” Papers from the 5th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 65). Ed. Sylvia M. Adamson, Vivien A. Law, Nigel Vincent, and Susan Wright. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 435–457.
• Sievers, Eduard. 1885. “Zur Rhythmik des Germanischen Alliterationsverses I.” Beitrage zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur 10: 209–314.
• Suzuki, Seiichi. 1996. The Metrical Organization of Beowulf: Prototype and Isomorphism. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.